Roving Periscope: “Ridiculous…won’t work,” says Trump on Musk’s political outfit

Virendra Pandit

New Delhi: Mocking his friend-turned-foe Elon Musk’s potential political outfit, “The America Party” (TAP), US President Donald Trump on Sunday said it was “ridiculous”, and “won’t work.”

Multibillionaire and Tesla CEO Musk, who shifted from the Democrats to support the Republican presidential candidate and donated millions for Trump’s campaign in 2024, was almost inseparable from him as he headed the cost-cutting “Department Of Government Efficiency, (DOGE) from January to May this year, but they fell out hard over the President’s “Big Beautiful” tax and spending mega-bill.

As the US Congress passed the controversial bill last week, Musk announced his new political outfit and said he would fund and campaign against lawmakers who supported the legislation.

Trump on Sunday slammed his former ally’s launching of a new political party as “ridiculous,” deepening the Republican President’s ongoing feud with the man who was his biggest backer until eight weeks ago.

The US President also branded the SpaceX and Tesla tycoon a “TRAIN WRECK” who had gone “off the rails” after Musk said he wanted to challenge the current US political system which he branded being run by “Uniparty”, clubbing together the Republicans and the Democrats as two sides of the same coin.

“I think it’s ridiculous to start a third party,” Trump told reporters before he boarded Air Force One on his way back to Washington from his New Jersey golf club.

“It’s always been a two-party system, and I think starting a third party just adds to confusion. Third parties have never worked. So, he can have fun with it, but I think it’s ridiculous,” he said, according to media reports on Monday.

South African-born Musk announced on Saturday that he would create the so-called “The America Party” to challenge what he called the United States’ “one-party system.” 

The President’s massive domestic spending plan would explode the US debt, he said, and vowed to do everything in his power to defeat lawmakers who voted for it. 

The former DOGE boss, who led a huge drive to slash federal spending and cut jobs between January 20 and May 31, 2025, equated Trump’s Republicans with rival Democrats when it came to domestic spending. 

“When it comes to bankrupting our country with waste & graft, we live in a one-party system, not a democracy,” Musk posted on X, formerly Twitter, the social media platform that he owns.

He, however, gave few details of his political plans and it was not clear whether he had registered the party with US electoral authorities, but it could cause Republicans headaches in the 2026 midterm elections to the US Congress — and beyond.

In a sign of how sensitive the issue could be for Trump, the President took to his Truth Social network while still on Air Force One to double down on his assault on Musk.

“I am saddened to watch Elon Musk go completely ‘off the rails,’ essentially becoming a TRAIN WRECK over the past five weeks,” Trump posted.

“The one thing Third Parties are good for is the creation of Complete and Total DISRUPTION & CHAOS, and we have enough of that with the Radical Left Democrats.”

In a lengthy diatribe, Trump repeated his earlier assertion that Musk’s ownership of electric vehicle company Tesla had made him turn on the President due to the spending bill cutting subsidies for such automobiles.

Musk has insisted that his opposition is primarily because of the bill increasing the US fiscal deficit and sovereign debt.

Earlier on Sunday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent also threw shade at Musk’s attempts to enter the political fray, telling him to stick to running his companies.

When asked by CNN if Musk’s plan bothered the Trump administration, Bessent offered thinly veiled criticism.

“I believe that the boards of directors at his various companies wanted him to come back and run those companies, which he is better at than anyone,” Bessent said.

“So, I imagine that those board of directors did not like this announcement yesterday and will be encouraging him to focus on his business activities, not his political activities.”

Musk left DOGE late in May to focus full-time on his corporate responsibilities, with Tesla’s sales and image especially suffering from his brief venture into Trump’s inner circle.

The President gave him a grand send-off in the Oval Office, during a bizarre ceremony in which Musk appeared with a black eye and received a golden key to the White House from Trump.

But just days later the two were exchanging bitter insults on social media after Musk criticized Trump’s flagship spending bill.

Trump did not comment on Sunday when asked if he would be asking Musk to return the golden key.

The game is on…

Watch this space for more updates…!